when in doubt use etqt – etiquette for today

Tag Archives: acronyms

Emoticons, though considered a form of communicating your emotions, really are the very simple version. I can’t remember when I left a friend’s company with a simple happy (or sad) face to something she said. How very one-dimensional.

So when is it appropriate to use them, or more importantly, when is it not a good idea?

It’s simple really, only use emoticons with friends and those friends that understand them, ie, not all family members get them, even if they try, and your new boss definitely won’t think you’re serious enough for a promotion if you send him a happy face after a good business meeting. Unless of course you work for Mark Zuckerberg.

They should not be used for official work communication, either by email, or phone texting. Think of the hierarchy in your office. If you want to go up the business ladder, then do not send emoticons, or acronyms, to your superiors.

When mobile phone texting was first launched, the sender was limited to a maximum number of 260 characters (or thereabouts), and anything over that would be charged another unit by one’s mobile phone provider, so it was often important to maximise the usage by minimising the number of characters used. Hence, the creative invention of emoticons. Today, we have limitless texts, so it’s just really brevity or an effort to be funny to insert them at every text.

Teenagers use them amongst themselves with acronyms and all other sorts of abbreviations to speed up the communication process. It does make this mother of two teenagers wonder why they don’t just pick up the phone and call their friends. They remind me how old I am, and tell me that it’s not cool.

I’ve thought this over dozens of times. It makes me think of the language that we use in our lives. I believe that there are three languages… all english;

1) the language we use with our elders, with superiors, or professionally, ie always polite, respectful, without cursing, always taking care to be as articulate as possible, lots of active listening;

2) the language we use with our children and those we feel we need to be a good example, also polite, without curse words, with a tone of confidence, respect and often extolling the correct behaviour; some active listening, lots of “ah ahh”, “yes, I see”;

3) the language we use with our friends and peers, where obviously anything goes. Yes, the most relaxed form of communication. Some cursing may figure here depending on the individual.

I daren’t send emoticons or acronyms to my elders for fear to offend them if they didn’t understand them. I don’t send them to my children either, and ask them not to send them to me. I have told my children that as their parent and teacher of life lessons, I would like to give them the purest education that I can, that of common courtesy, and of course, etiquette, so I ask them to respect the roles we have, and within those roles learn, and practice, good communication skills. They also have all their friends with whom they can 🙂 or LOL.

Funnily enough, I rarely send emoticons or acronyms to friends. I do think it’s generational. I just seem to want to practice complete and coherent sentences with my friends. Nowadays, it’s easy to use your voice recognition to speak/write your texts for you with just a quick perusal to check mistakes. Oh, and I also do pick up the phone and enjoy having full conversations with them too.